A Missing Piece
by The 8th Stone
Summary: In the future of a world without a past, Sakura finds a strange book in the Leaf archives with pictures looking eerily familiar, mirror images of her friends. Yet... who is that brooding young man in the back, the third member Team 7 never had?


_**A**_

_**.**_

_**M  
>I<br>S  
>S<br>I  
>N<br>G**_

_**.**_

_**Piece**_

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><p><strong>AN:** Sci-fi. Nuclear radiation. Wut.

This story is an entry for the SasuSaku Month Event that is going on right now on LiveJournal, based on the prompt **Chance Meetings: Shatter**. And . . . well, it fits very, very loosely with the plot. Very loosely.

Takes place in the real world, not Narutoverse, and deals sort of with post-apocalypse and the danger of nuclear weapons. It's like a . . . AU canon storyline, except some . . . things. So if something happened that isn't supposed to happen, this is probably why. (That or I made a mistake.)

Obviously I am not the expert on nuclear warfare/how it works, so if any mistakes are found, I apologize and will try to fix it as quickly as possible. Thanks. :)

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><p><strong>One<br>**NARUTO

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><p>It was World War III, the most dreaded war of all.<p>

No one remembered what started the spark that lit the burning fuse. Politics was too fragile—one unsettled dispute over oil prices and it was it. Nations were forced to take sides. Leaders ordered assassinations and bombings while innocent civilian died under the hands of words. But soon, too, these white-collars would be killed one way or another, whether it be a stray uranium-tipped missile or a traitorous assassination.

Ground shattered, blue skies turned gray. Communications between cities fell, and diseases reigned. New bacterium sprouted one by one, each deadlier than the last. Vaccines were not being distributed fast enough. More lives were taken away by microscopic parasites than with each bomb's blast; rather than the quick, easy death, their last days were spent on hospital beds shrieking in agonizing pain.

After a while, no one was sure which side was winning, who was trying to destroy whom—or even if their government still stood, if their country could still be called a country. Every day, bits and pieces of scattered news would travel to groups of fugitives hidden behind mountains.

The war lasted ten years.

As the ninth year passed, three-fourths of the Earth's population was wiped off the face of the place. The remaining of some two billion people scattered around the globe, struggling everyday with the stench of death and radiation that drifted in the air. Soot and smoke from bombarded cities covered the sky.

Where was their home? Why were they alone? Where was the government?

Where was the government, the one who had so convincingly assured the people of the war's profits? Where was the government, the rich fools who stuffed themselves with wine and finery while their soldiers were massacred out in the field? Where was the government, the men who had promised to provide them with shelter, the wealthy who had started the apocalypse, _the liars who'd destroyed their homes?_

Gone, of course. The powerful were the first ones to be targeted. They were gone already. It was nothing but hubris, expecting them to be alive.

The world was splintering apart.

After the last bomb detonated somewhere in a place once known as Paris, the few remaining political powers of the United Nations called for a meeting. Like the last breaths of a dying horse, the United Nations called in for one final proclamation:

"_From today on forward, all written documents shall be destroyed. Any material that contains any sort of information shall be destroyed. Any sort of technology shall be destroyed. Any scientific research shall be destroyed. . . ."_

And despite the near annihilation of all communication, the news spread like wildfire. The fire burned across the world, fueled by the people's anger.

Because they found the answer, right?

Technology was the one to blame.

Machinery was their ultimate downfall.

_Knowledge was their demise._

In the end, history washed away in the shadow of burning books and destroyed relics. Metallic machines rusted and fell over time. Memories—truths, facts—faded into legends and myths after generations of retelling. Seven thousand years of science and arts were buried underneath the earth.

But the outcome was the same.

In the span of a decade, the Modern Ages plunged back into the prehistoric.

"_. . . Let us restart anew, and let the human race continue. No longer shall history repeat such tragedy, or no longer shall we exist."_

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><p>.<p>

.

.

_Some Time Later_

_._

_._

_._

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><p>It was raining that day.<p>

Everyone but shinobi was at home, safe from the hazardous NCE, or "natural chakra energy," that came with the downpour since ivilians were unable to absorb NCE. Cases of overdose were enough to drive Sakura crazy in the hospital. But despite the work that always immediately followed, Sakura always loved those rare rainy days in Konoha.

Rain hadn't always been that way, she remembered her grandmother telling her so. Obaa-san had said, when Sakura was little, that rain had been different generations and generations ago. No NCE, just plain water. Legends like that passed down all the way from before Konohagakure no Sato was even built, prior of the Forgotten War.

Nevertheless, as much as she hated rainy hospital shift days, she needn't worry about them right now. She was helping Tsunade remove some of the stuff from the archives (not everyone had super strength), and was just on her way down. Before the doors, Sakura rolled her shoulders a bit to warm up her muscles for the task to come.

She opened the door.

The place must not have seen a proper duster for years. Dust piled up everywhere, atop bookshelves and across the floor. After coughing and sneezing a few times, she scanned the room through watery eyes.

_Ugh . . . _She wrinkled her nose._ Now . . . where's that peace treaty thing shishou wanted . . . ?_

Her eyes zeroed on the huge stack of papers that reached all the way from the table to the ceiling.

_The Arigaki Doctrine_, read the tag on the floor.

But that wasn't all. A small arrow was drawn by those three words. Her eyes followed the arrow and saw another pile of papers on the shelf behind it. And another. And another . . .

On the last mountain of files, there was a pink piece of paper. Sakura scooted forward for a better look.

More words:

_Sakura—_

_All the documents you see from here _[an arrow pointed down]_ and over there _[another arrow pointing the other way]_ is the doctrine I need to review. Be a dear and bring it to me, will you?  
>Thanks. :)<em>

_Love,  
>Tsunade<em>

_(P.S. HAHA! REVENGE IS MINE!)_

Her eye twitched.

It took her all afternoon to bring the papers out of the archive (careful not to touch any of those other ancient stuff around), and stacking them in a pyramid shape for better handhold. All the while she traveled back and forth between there and the Hokage's office, with Tsunade blissfully drunk.

Now Sakura was on the very last stack. With a grunt, she lifted it off the ground.

At that action, she immediately tripped over the huge book about tariffs that she had been so careful to avoid in the last dozen journeys.

_Shit shit shit shit shi—_

_Thud!_

"Kuso . . ." she grunted, rubbing her forehead.

Papers scattered everywhere. And to top it all off, a book fell on her head.

"OW!"

Sakura's gaze traveled down to that _damn book_. Seriously, this was overkill. No wonder it hurt like hell when it came down.

Judging by its thickness, this _damn book_ must be what? Over seven thousand pages long? It weighed like a ton when Sakura tried to lift it off her foot too, and that was including her chakra-enhanced strength.

She had half a mind to pulverize it with her fist as she lifted it over. Stupid book, stupid old book, stupid old book that weighed like bricks and—

She paused.

* * *

><p>"All done, Sakura?" Shizune asked while dragging a drunken Tsunade along.<p>

"Yep." But Sakura was distracted. "Um, hey, Tsunade-shishou . . . ? Can I borrow this?"

"Mimblebingle . . ." Tsunade muttered from her desk.

Guess that was a . . . yes?

Shizune sighed. "She's got a nose like a bloodhound, this one—yet she still can't handle her alcohol."

"Jiraiya! Stop staring at my chest . . . I'm gonna punch you all the way to Kiri, I'm telling you, you pervert—!" After her brief outburst, the Leaf's Kage face-planted on the desk. "Ngh . . ."

"Another patient?"

Shizune shook her head. Her eyes glazed over with reminisce.

"Today's . . . my uncle, Dan's . . ."

"Oh."

Shizune gave Sakura a kindly smile. "It's alright. Don't worry about it too much—you have the rest of the day off! Why don't you go along with Naruto?"

"But—"

"It's alright. I can handle her."

"You sure? I don't mind. Naruto's probably with Jiraiya, peeking at girls at bathhouses (like how he's been doing for the past three years . . .)."

"Yes, I'm sure. Tell me how the book ends, will you?"

Even though it was only to dismiss her, Sakura's attention immediately averted to the book in her hand—the same book she had found in the Konoha Archives. Without knowing why, her hand moved to hide the cover. She wasn't sure she'd be able to explain what it was all about to Shizune, especially when she didn't know it herself.

"'Kay." Sakura frowned one last time. "Are you sure, Shizune?"

But the nurse was already scurrying around, cleaning up a puddle of sake.

Tonton the pig oinked twice from her seat, as if telling her not to worry. Sakura smiled.

"Guess so, Tonton. Better not disturb Shizune and Tsunade during times like this."

Because Sakura knew her place, and knew that, compared to Shizune, she still had a lot to go in regards of Tsunade.

She waved goodbye to Tonton, and quietly close the door behind her.

Like Shizune said, she had a book to read.

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><p><em>NARUTO<em>

At least that was how the symbols on the front cover looked like, right?

Yet as she checked her dictionary again and again, Sakura couldn't find even the first word, "N," that strange-looking zigzag.

Perhaps the orange coloring of the word had something to do with it?

After a while, Sakura laid the book down on her desk in defeat and rocked her chair backwards. This was impossible! How was she supposed to read _NARUTO_ if she didn't even know how to read the title of the (very, very heavy and very, very old) book?

She huffed several more times before curiosity got the better of her. Screw words. Who needed them anyway? Her eyes dropped down to the cover of the book, to what had caught her attention in the first place at that dusty old archive.

The corners of the book were torn, revealing hard cardboard underneath illustrations. Its many pages were yellow at sides. The book looked like it had been sitting on the shelves for at least five decades, yet Sakura had a feeling that it was _much_ more than that. But when her fingers touched the cover, it was strangely smooth, and Sakura could see the remains of some kind of glossy material embedded upon the cover—the cover that wrapped around at least a thousand pages.

Yet it was the picture over the cover of the book that she found most interesting.

It was an extensively detailed drawing of a twelve year old boy. Though the coloring was slightly faded, she could tell that this boy had spiky blond hair and sparkling blue eyes. In the portrait, he stood underneath the big, bold _NARUTO_ proud and grinning with his arms crossed over his chest. His body covered most of the front page along with the two scrolls and a giant red-and-black cloak over the jumpsuit he wore.

This boy was the carbon copy of Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura's teammate and one of her best friends.

When Sakura first saw this picture, it raised more questions than answers in her head, one of the most obvious about the sheer impossibility for the time. Naruto was born not sixteen years ago, yet this book was definitely more than that. So . . . had someone written a book about Naruto . . . but made it look old intentionally . . . ? And why would someone want to make a book on Naruto anyway?

And that was why she brought it back here to her apartment for analysis.

Soon, though, Sakura realized that she couldn't even read the words on the cover. How would she decipher what it meant?

She sighed.

"Maybe it is written in Continentian inside?"

Her hand lifted the front cover to the first page.

A cloud of dust rose to her head. She coughed, eyes stinging. To her dismay, it was more of those mysterious symbols she—neither did _Shinobi's Common Codes, Version #5_, for that matter—could not recognize.

They looked something like this:

_This is the complete edition of Shonen Jump's series, Naruto, the Japanese manga written and finished by the late Kishimoto Masashi. The series was completed after . . ._

Well, she recognized the strange cross, "T," and the zigzag, "N," that appeared in that sentence. They coincided with the "T" and "N" in NARUTO also.

A secret code? More like a whole different writing system; what-was-that-word . . . ?

Language.

Perhaps Naruto was written in a whole different language?

But that was impossible. She learned it in the Ninja Academy herself: after the Forgotten War, and the years after it, all other languages except for Continentian had died out.

But . . .

To be honest, the textbook wasn't too clear about how the Forgotten War killed so many people, or what even _was_ the Forgotten War. All anyone knew was that the Forgotten War had been fought a long, long time ago, way before the start of the shinobi villages and daimyo systems. The only reason all of the "scientists" (as they fancied themselves to be called, though everyone knew that the scientists couldn't explain shit anyway) and numerous other people believed that there was a war was because of the thousands and thousands of corpses and other . . . strange things that were unearthed a few years or so ago in Konoha. They were still finding more of these skeletons and bizarre objects even now.

Sometimes, when Sakura wondered over to the Konoha dig site way across the village, she would see these ancient artifacts. There were all sorts of stuff at the dig site, like a black piece of glass with square designs (though Shikamaru, who also went there from time to time, told her that there were tiny, intricate wires behind each pane of glass for some unfathomable reason); short, metal tubes with a handle and a small . . . trigger, she thought they were called (sometimes, Naruto would steal these tube-handle-trigger things and swing it around his head like those ancient barbarians); small spheres with numerous unworkable buttons all over its surface (it looked like a strange form of a television remote . . .); and even the seldom broken light bulbs, computer parts, and other things Sakura could vaguely recognize as normal, common, _modern_ household objects.

. . . Yet everything unearthed must have been over a few thousand years old.

At this point, Sakura stopped train of thought with a small laugh.

She was being ridiculous. Worse, she was acting like those radical theorists, and _they_ were the ones who started the whole "civilization before the Neolithic Ages" theory, saying that the Forgotten War was proof of such a civilization.

Ridiculous.

Radical theorists were the worst of those "scientists." They were the fools who easily believed those ancient legends, like the one Sakura's baa-chan told her. Myths and legends could hardly be taken as facts.

Sakura sighed. To be honest, even if there _was_ some kind of technologically-advanced, euphoric heaven-like civilization that existed where men lived like gods without the worries of food and starvation, it would not help her with this goddamn book. She glared at _Naruto_ again (having decided that, since _NARUTO_'s cover was of her friend Naruto Uzumaki, she might as well call it that), but gave up trying to decode its words.

"This is pointless. I might've as well as just read. . . ." she grumbled to herself.

No longer able to contain her curiosity, she flipped the page over—

There was a ridge of ripped paper behind the introduction (because had to be what all those words were about, right?). Sakura paid little attention to that, her eyes focused instead on the giant picture on the very first page.

It was the Hokage Mountains.

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><p>She glanced at the picture once more. The resemblance was uncanny. She was unfamiliar with this kind of drawing style, which was drawn with thin, precise lines instead of the bold printings of a calligraphy pen—more like an elaborate pencil doodle than a work of art. But she could also tell without a doubt that it was the Hokage Monument.<p>

The four Kages' faces, engraved upon the Konoha mountains . . .

When Sakura looked closer into the book, she almost laughed aloud. There were graffiti all over the Kages' faces! It was almost like—

Her heart sank horribly.

It . . . it was almost like one of Naruto's Academy pranks . . .

How would the artist know . . . ?

She was feeling slightly scared now, which was completely irrational. Why would anyone be afraid of a book?

She flipped open the next page.

It was Hiruzen Sarutobi.

The late Hokage was painting over a canvas—or was he writing?—while, in the bottom panels, a hasty sketch of two Chuunin were . . . telling him something, indicated by the word bubbles sprouting out of their mouths. Well, at least what Sakura assumed to be word bubbles. The "language" was again unreadable to Sakura.

The scene changed on the next page. It showed people on top of the Hokage building shouting at Naruto—Naruto; there was no doubt about it—to get down, and Naruto laughing and shouting back, his body dangled by rope and a paint bucket in hand. He still had his goggles over his head. The Third arrives. But then came . . . Iruka. Sakura recognized his spiky tied back hair and the scar across the bridge of his nose.

Iruka stretched his back. In the next word bubbles, Naruto was flailing around in the air, his waist tied by the climbing-rope. Beside him were spiky word bubbles. Sakura concluded that this was Iruka shouting something at Naruto.

And that was . . . her Academy classroom. Sakura's thumb grazed over the delicate paper. Messy floor, peeling wallpapers, and that ridiculously huge chalkboard at the front of the class. The picture captured some of the student's backs too—most Sakura recognized but could not name.

Her knuckles whitened.

Oh god . . .

Oh god. She remembered this scene. She remembered it clearly.

Naruto had managed to sneak out of class that day, and everyone was ordered to study hall that morning. Sakura had been so nervous for the exams the next day Ino suggested they make paper shuriken and have target practice on Ami and the others. Sakura still had the shuriken they made.

She glanced down at the book. It was almost as if she could read this unknown language now.

"_TOMORROW IS THE SHINOBI ACADEMY'S GRADUATION EXAM AND YOU'VE FAILED IT THE LAST TWO TIMES!" Iruka shouted. "THIS ISN'T THE TIME TO BE CAUSING TROUBLE, IDIOT!"_

_The whole class laughed._

"_That Naruto . . . He got in trouble again. . . ."_

"_Such an idiot. . . ."_

"_I know. So stupid. . . ."_

_Naruto whipped his head to the side. "Che. Whatever. . . ."_

_Iruka snapped. "EVERYONE LINE UP! WE'RE TAKING A HENGE NO JUTSU TEST RIGHT NOW!"_

"_WHAAAT?"_

Sakura's hand fisted as dread built in her stomach. This . . . these pictures, these actions . . . They were too accurate to be true.

She had to warn Tsunade.

Someone had been watching Naruto's each and every move, all the way since his Genin years.

Someone had been spying on Konoha.

The author of _Naruto_ was dangerous.

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><p><strong>AN:** The first chapters are always the hardest to write. :o Sorry. Hope I didn't bore you to death yet by the last sentence. -_-"

So, hope it wasn't too confusing. Six chapters are planned out for this fic, and it shouldn't be more than twelve chapters long. Sasuke's debut will be made next chapter . . .

Peace, love, hope, dreams, and all that good stuff, people.


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